How to learn Hangeul Part 1/4

Learning the Korean alphabet is much easier than you think. It's so easy I'm surprised more people don't do it. It will take you about two hours to completely master the consonants and to gain general knowledge of the vowels. Mastery of the vowel system takes more practice, but you can get around very well without mastery. To learn the Linguist Ashley way, you'll need to buy some index cards to turn into flashcards. 

(Note to linguists: You are not my primary audience. I hope that people untrained in linguistics can use this guide to learn to read Hangeul. I know phonology, and I know these sounds might be explained differently in a phonology class, but these were the classifications apparently used by King Sejong's linguists.)

CONSONANTS

The linguists who invented the Korean alphabet were no dummies. They wanted it to be easy for normal people (at the time, farmers and peasants) to learn. They actually made the consonants stylized pictures of the human mouth making these sounds. As the Guinness commercial said, Brilliant.

I am going to explain the Korean consonants in a way that will help you recognize the way they are written in Hangeul.

The Bilabials (ones you make using mostly your lips)

This is a picture of a closed human mouth viewed from the front: ㅁ

Make an m sound. Your mouth should be closed and the lips pressed together. The square is a stylized picture of your mouth making the m sound.

Now make a b sound. b starts as m, with your lips closed and pressed together. Then you make a puff of air.

This is a picture of a closed human mouth, but with a puff of air: ㅂ

The two lines at the top are the puff of air. Make sense?

Now make a p sound. Does it seem like it has a more powerful puff of air? The Korean linguists who created this system thought so. 

This is a picture of a closed human mouth making a bigger puff of air: ㅍ

It has lines coming from the top and the bottom of the square.

Now take 3 index cards and write these three Hangeul letters on one side and the corresponding English letters on the other side.

ㅁ m

ㅂ b

ㅍ p

The Dental consonants (the ones you make by pushing air between your teeth)

These symbols are also stylized views of the human mouth viewed from the front. This is a picture of the human mouth making an s sound: ㅅ

I like to imagine this as the person's lips slightly raised to show the front teeth as she pushes the air between the teeth to make the s sound. Easy, right? 

Now, make an s sound and allow it to morph into a j. The Korean linguists who invented Hangeul fancied a j as like an s, but with more air. Thus their j is an s with an extra burst of air at the top: ㅈ

 I'm sure you can guess how they make a ch. Yep: even more air coming out than a j. They place the extra burst of air at the top: ㅊ

 Now you are ready to make 3 more flashcards:

ㅅ s

ㅈ j

ㅊ ch

Back of the tongue consonants

These are the consonants you make by bringing the broad, flat back part of your tongue up to the roof of your mouth. (Linguists call these velar consonants. Specifically, they are plosives. Maybe I'll get into it in depth on this blog one day.) Korean linguists called these molar sounds because you made them in the same area as your molars. For these symbols, imagine you are a viewing a human mouth from the side.

Make a g sound. Notice how your tongue comes up to the roof of your mouth at the back? Hangeul makes a stylized drawing of this back-of-the-tongue action: ㄱ

So from left to right, that drawing shows the very most back part of the tongue at the top, then the tip of the tongue coming down. Hey, it's stylized.

Now make a k sound. I bet you know what's coming next. That's right: an extra puff of air: ㅋ

Now it's time to make 2 more flashcards:

ㄱ g

ㅋ k

Lingual consonants (made using mostly your tongue)

The alveolar ridge is this hard part of the roof of your mouth. You'll find it if you put your tongue on your front teeth and pull it backwards. It's a hard bump thing on the roof of your mouth at the front of your mouth. The first three lingual consonants use this alveolar ridge.

For these letters, imagine again that you are viewing the human mouth from the side. Make an n sound. Your tongue should go right to that alveolar ridge. The Korean letter that represents the n sound is a picture of your tongue touching the alveolar ridge: ㄴ

Now make a d sound. Your tongue goes to the same place, but instead of humming like you do with an n, you release a puff of air. The Korean letter for d is like an n but with a line representing a puff of air: ㄷ

Now make a t sound. You guessed it--extra puff of air: ㅌ

You may not think that r and l are very similar to n, d, and t. The Korean language has a different relationship to r and l than English. We distinguish between the two. Korean, not so much. For our purposes--namely, so you can read Hangeul--just think of them as the same sound. You make these sounds with your tongue, so Hangeul groups them together.

Make an r sound. Make an l sound. Do you feel how the tip of your tongue curves down, then up, to make these sounds? The Hangeul symbol for r/l is a little squiggle, which is a stylized picture of your tongue as it makes the sound: ㄹ

Now make your flashcards:

ㄴ n

ㄷd

ㅌ t

ㄹ r/l

Throat consonants

These letters represent the human throat as a circle, which it basically is. Here's a picture of relaxed vocal cords.

Here's the stylized picture of your throat in Hangeul: ㅇ

This letter can either be silence, when it is the first letter in a syllable, or it can mean ng if it is at the end of a syllable. We'll memorize both uses and sort them out later.

Make an h sound. Predictably, Hangeul pictures this sound as silence with two puffs of air: ㅎ

(You may be asking, What happened to the single puff of air? It used to be a letter representing a glottal stop. It is no longer used, but it looked like this: ㆆ)

Stop. Flashcard time. 

ㅇ silence/ng

ㅎ h

Double consonants

That's all the consonants you really need to memorize. The rest are double consonants. They are just made by doubling one of the basic symbols. They're so easy you might not want to waste your index cards even making these flashcards. These are called "tense consonants" and you are supposed to make your mouth more tense when you make these sounds. I don't but Koreans always understand me. I wouldn't worry about pronouncing these differently than the single consonants until you've already mastered reading Korean. Even if you live in Korea many years, you probably won't ever need to distinguish between regular and tense consonants; Koreans can understand you.

ㄲ gg

 ㄸ dd

 ㅃ bb

 ㅆ ss

 ㅉ jj

*  *  *

That's it! That's all the consonants. Take a few minutes and go through the 14 (or 19, if you made flashcards for the double consonants) flashcards you made. I like to put them in my purse and study them when I'm waiting in line or for an elevator. You should master them in about an hour. 

When you've memorized the Hangeul consonants, we'll move on to vowels.